At Home With One’s Self On Valentia Island
The thing that is really hard, and really amazing,
is giving up on being perfect
and beginning the work of becoming yourself.
- Anna Quindlen, 1953-
Valentia Island, Ireland
This image was taken on Valentia Island, one of Europe’s westernmost inhabited locales, lying off the Iveragh Peninsula in the southwest of County Kerry in Ireland. I felt right at home on Valentia, which is approximately seven miles long by almost two miles wide, with 650 residents. My own town is the smallest in Massachusetts, at mere 1.2 square miles, with a population about six times that of Valentia. Located on a rocky peninsula jutting into Massachusetts Bay, Native Americans called the area “Nahant,” meaning “the point” or “almost an island.”
I had made this trip to my family’s “Motherland” of Ireland with my mom. This charming vista greeted us as we arrived on the island after crossing the bridge at Portmagee from the mainland. I had an immediate, visceral reaction to the landscape, feeling both a jolt of recognition and an ache of profound longing. The weathered stone house, with its faded red roof, nestled so comfortably on a crest in the lush field. The building seemed to personify an old soul who had dwelled here for an eternity, gazing out across the bay and the green hills beyond, under an endless stream of low-lying puffs of clouds. The scene spoke to me of a long-held identity, a very settled sense of place, an air of absolute contentment and utter certainty of being at home.
My conflicted response to the scene was to be expected; I was in a very “betwixt and between” state of mind. I was on this trip while taking a sabbatical from my job, which had long been the lone anchor of my own identity. Today, I can see that the “push me, pull me” effect this homey scene had on me reflected my own internal landscape, a far from peaceful place where my instincts had become a battleground. I was a puzzled soldier, for whom the commander’s strategy no longer made sense; who was now bristling at the barked orders of “Conform!” Creative urges camped outside high walls of supposed security, laying siege. A restless spirit that yearned to go new places called from below a tower built of expectations. A stirring that some other purpose waited beyond the horizon blazed like a bonfire outside the bastions of complacency.
Such is the power of Ireland’s imagery—small wonder its lore is so lyrical and evocative.
Mug Ruith, or “slave of the wheel,” is a figure in Irish mythology, a powerful blind druid who lived on Valentia Island. According to legend, he could grow to enormous size, and his breath caused storms and turned men to stone. He wore a bull’s hide and a bird mask, and flew in a machine called the roth rámach, the “oared wheel.” He had an ox-driven chariot in which night was as bright as day, a star-speckled black shield with a silver rim, and a stone which could turn into a poisonous eel when thrown in water.
The myths about Mug Ruith span more than two millennia of Irish history and the reign of nineteen kings. Some tales say he was in Jerusalem during the time of Christ. In Lebor Gabála Érenn, or The Book of the Taking of Ireland, an 11th century collection of poems and prose narratives recounting the mythical origins and history of the Irish race, Mug Ruith is said to have died nearly two thousand years before. Perhaps due to the druid’s supposed longevity, some have concluded his persona represented a later-day sun or storm god.
Anna Quindlen, quoted above, is a much-lauded Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and best-selling author whose power of the pen and influential career have spanned 30 years. Her resume is enough to humble any aspiring writer. Her work has appeared in some of America’s most influential newspapers, many of its best-known magazines, and on both fiction and non-fiction bestseller lists.
Her bio seems to chronicle the quintessential career track. Rising from the ranks of copygirl, Quindlen joined The New York Times in 1977 as a general assignment reporter and was named the paper’s deputy metropolitan editor in 1983. A columnist with the paper from 1981 to 1994, in 1990 Quindlen became only the third woman in the paper’s history to write a regular column for its influential Op-Ed page. In 1992 Quindlen won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary.
Quindlen has written five bestselling novels, one of which was “One True Thing,” a Universal feature film starring Meryl Streep. With “A Short Guide To A Happy Life,” published in 2000, Quindlen became the first writer ever to have books appear on the fiction, nonfiction, and self-help New York Times Best Seller lists. In 1999, she joined Newsweek, writing a bi-weekly column until announcing her semi-retirement in the May 18, 2009 issue of the magazine.
It’s hard for me to imagine a career trajectory that could be any more perfect than Quindlen’s. Perhaps that is because she began the work of “becoming herself” at an early age; or, perhaps her own perfectionism worked to her advantage for a period of time, propelling her to achievements she might not have realized without it.
The latter has been my experience, although I can’t say I knew it at the time. While interviewing for a position early in my career, I was asked the standard question of what I considered to be my greatest weakness. Thinking myself to be very clever, I delivered my well-crafted response: “I am a perfectionist.” I got the job and was later told the interviewer had described me as “Bubbles—she has all the right answers!” Nonetheless, little did I know how prescient my twenty-something instinct was. Ultimately, running my life by anticipating what you would think was my best next move became a painful process, as the real me became stifled and buried under murky layers of who I thought you wanted me to be.
Preserved by strata of silt that began accumulating about 385 million years ago on Valentia Island are the footprints of a primitive vertebrate. In waddling along the muddy shoreline of what was then swampland, a creature left prints that later fossilized and, in 1993, were discovered by an undergraduate geology student. The Valentia Island tracks are among the oldest signs of vertebrate life on land.
The shores here have launched livelihoods and leisure pastimes as old as Mug Ruith, if not prehistoric critters. Seine boats are traditional timber crafts that have been used along this coastline for both work and play. The boats hold 12 oarsmen and a coxswain and were commonly used by fisherman in the Iveragh Peninsula, as well as raced. A seine boat regatta is held in Valentia every August.
The seine boats are operated by two men rowing each oar. One pulls the outside of the oar, which is rounded, and guides the motion of the oar. The other pulls the middle of the oar, stopping it at the last minute to prevent both men being hit in the chest with the moving oar. The seine fishing boats were accompanied by similarly-built four-oared pilot boats. The pilot boat would cast out a seine net in an arc, closing into a circle with the seine boat, which would then haul in the net.
Valentia Island’s place in history involves laying cable as well as nets–it is the location of the oldest Atlantic cable stations in the world. According to published accounts, prior to the transatlantic telegraph, American longitude measurements had a 2,800-foot variance with those of Europe. As part of an effort to correctly link longitudes between the U.S. and Europe, Dr. Benjamin A. Gould, Jr. and Mr. A. T. Mosman built a temporary longitude observatory adjacent to the Foilhommerum Cable Station on Valentia, and sought to synchronize longitude observations with Heart’s Content, Newfoundland. After many attempts thwarted by rainy and cloudy days, the first transatlantic longitude signals were exchanged between Foilhommerum and Hearts’s Content on October 24, 1866.
I endured many gloomy and overcast days frustrated by thinking I needed to be “perfect,” rather than realizing I am not an all-knowing druid, I am a human, a condition that will always entail making mistakes. I have come closer to reaching my own “Heart’s Content” and finding my place in the world through recognizing the undue “Pier pressure” I put on myself. One of the nuggets of wisdom my mother has passed along to me is her definition of humility—remaining teachable. I can’t very well access the joy and wonder of new discoveries if I expect myself to already have all the answers. By accepting I will always be a work-in-progress, I can be comfortable that I have my oar to pull, others have theirs, and together we weave an enduring net of love.
http://indigo.ie/~cguiney/valentia.html
http://vhc.cablehistory.org/index.htm